


let love in

by twistedsky



Series: the soulmate project [1]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-18 17:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4715123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra is going to die, so she doesn't have a lot of time to worry about soulmates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let love in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ezekiels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezekiels/gifts).



> This is for the lovely Alice(biathenas/foxthorns). 
> 
> There's a lot of discussion of death in this fic. 
> 
> I haven't rewatched this show since it initially aired, and my memory's a disaster, so hopefully this is generally canon-compliant(at least, up to a point). There are a few mentions of Flynn/Eve. 
> 
> All mistakes are my own.

The mirror, the legend says, can be used to see a literal representation of your connection to your soulmate.

Cassandra believes in magic and wonder, but she’s not sure how she feels about the whole soulmate thing.

It’s a nice thought, she supposes. It’s romantic, and maybe too fairytale-esque for real life.

She’s got a tumor in her head, and a clock ticking down to her death. She’s running out of time, and she doesn’t exactly have time for love.

She definitely doesn’t want to leave behind a broken heart when she goes—it’s almost bad enough that she has anyone at all who cares about her.

She wants to be missed, but not that way.

Cassandra picks up the mirror, and she intends to simply take it back to the Library and give it its own place, because that’s the right decision.

It’s practical, and safe, and it’ll keep her from doing something foolish like following the thing to her soulmate.

She rationalizes it—she’s dying anyway, she’s probably disqualified from even having a soulmate. Assuming that the universe can pair you with someone, it can also probably _not_ do that if it knows there’s no point.

And yes, she’s ascribing a lot of choice and thought processes to the concept of everything that exists in this entire plane of existence, but she’s seen a lot of strange things in recent days.

“Are you coming?” Ezekiel calls out from the jeep they’d rented to get to the middle of nowhere, where the mirror had apparently been causing problems for locals. “I’m getting hungry.”

“You’re always hungry,” Jake says, rolling his eyes and elbowing Ezekiel in the side jokingly.

“I’ll be right there,” Cassandra calls out, and walks over from where she’d been standing, carefully avoiding looking at the mirror.

She’s not going to do it.

She’s not going to do it, she repeats to herself.

Intellectual curiosity gets the best of her.

She looks down at the mirror, and sees the truth.

“Oh,” she says. “ _Oh.”_

~~

She’s quiet on the ride back to the town.

Flynn and Eve are off on a different mission—they’d had to split up, because the other mission had been time sensitive, and this one had seemed simple enough for them to complete without a guardian.

Technically, they're all full-fledged Librarians, and they could all go off on their own, but they're better together. 

Cassandra keeps double-checking the mirror, and every time the result is the same: Jake and Ezekiel are her soulmates.

She taps her fingers on the mirror, frowning at it as if it'll suddenly change its mind. Maybe it's broken. 

She knows there are platonic soulmates, but that’s supposed to manifest differently from all that she’s read.

She frowns at the mirror.

Jake and Ezekiel are already too close to her, and she can’t let this be a possibility. She can’t risk them doing something foolish like falling in love with her. She’s just going to break their hearts.

She’ll break her own too, she knows, if she’s not careful.

She shakes her head.

That’s ridiculous.

She cares about these two people, and she cares about Flynn and Eve and Jenkins too.

She’s not falling in love with anyone.

~~

She hands the mirror over, and she never wants to see it again.

Jake and Ezekiel show little to no interest in the mirror, which they mostly avoided once she got hold of it.

Maybe they’re nervous about what it does, or maybe they just don’t want to know.

Maybe, they just don’t care.

She’s making herself silly with nerves, and she breathes, and contemplates math equations until the urge to crawl under a table subsides.

She’s fine. Absolutely fine.

“Are you okay?” Jenkins asks as the boys wander off to, well, probably cause trouble somewhere. 

“I’m fine,” Cassandra says, smiling brightly, with as much intensity and sincerity as she can manage.

It’s a little less than usual, and that’s enough to see to it that Jenkins is frowning at her now, like he’s seeing right through her, and he hasn’t decided  whether or not he should call her on it.

“These objects can be very dangerous,” Jenkins says carefully. “Sometimes not just in what they do. Sometimes, they tell us things that change us, make us unpredictable. Make us wonder who we are to the point that we barely recognize ourselves.”

Cassandra’s smile fades. “I know who I am,” she says, and she’s sure of that.

That’s never really been the problem, you see.

“That’s good to hear,” he says, clasping his hand on her shoulder. “Be careful.”

“I’m fine,” she says, and he nods and then leaves her to her thoughts.

She’s fine.

~~

She’s been living with this for too long, you see.

Everyone knows that they’re going to die.

Yes, there’s magic, and maybe ways to avoid death(if only for a while), but most people across all the years of human history have had their rightful deaths when the time came.

Cassandra knows she’s going to die, just like everyone else does.

Some people, like her, know that the window of possibility for their deaths is shorter.

It somehow adds to the unpredictability of life, just as it adds to her certainty that it’ll happen sooner rather than later.

It’s always been hard for her to make friends as it is, because she’s always been a little stranger, a little to smart for the tastes of the people around her.

Most times, that doesn’t bother her.

But it gets isolating, and that isolation can be exhausting.

Things are different now. She’s a Librarian, and she has friends, and maybe even a makeshift family.

They go on adventures around the world together, they lay their lives down for each other, and they spend important moments of their lives together.

Flynn and Eve are falling in love, and that’s sweet, and as magical as anything they’ve ever come across.

It touches her heart to see them together, to see what they’re capable of when they’re together—they’re better together, better in love. Stronger, happier, even more willful.

“Sickening,” Ezekiel says, shaking his body off as if he’s covered in spiders. 

He’s exaggerating, and Cassandra knows this. She’s seen the way he looks at them sometimes, and she thinks he likes them together almost as much as she does.

“I think it’s nice,” Jake says, and Cassandra tilts her head sideways to look at him.

She smiles, because she can’t help herself.

“Me too,” Cassandra agrees.

~~

The three of them are a good team.

Between the three of them, they’ve got different skillsets covered.

Eve’s sometimes an integral part of their team, and sometimes they make do without her.

Since Flynn and the Library have returned, they’ve been getting good at the whole team thing.

She feels like she should distance herself from them now, because they’re too close, and she cares too much for them, but her nosebleeds are getting more frequent, even without extended use of her intellectual ‘gifts’ and she’s having more and more trouble denying herself the simple need for human companionship.

Friendship, she’s discovered, can be a dangerous thing for a dying girl.

Ezekiel’s taken to carrying handkerchiefs around for her, and her favorite kind of chocolate for when she’s feeling weak.

The sugar bump is nice, but the fact that he cares enough to do it makes her a little weak in the knees.

Jake is always there when she’s about to fall, always there to let her lean on him, always there to help her along the way.

She’s there for them too—the thought of which makes her heart clench tightly in her chest.

She won’t always be.

She can’t always be part of the team. She can’t always do the math, or come up with the good ideas, or pack them all picnic lunches when they’ve got a long trip to a beautiful place.

She hopes they’ll be okay without her.

~~

They eat together frequently, and Cassandra gets used to the way that Jake takes his time, and focuses his whole attention on his food, and Ezekiel eats quickly, like he thinks he’s going to run out of time and the food’s going to be gone.

She falls somewhere in between, and enjoys the quiet companionship of a shared meal.

The arguing will start again, somewhere between Ezekiel finishing his meal, and Jake finishing his.

“Do you stop to breathe?” Jake asks, looking a little disgusted.

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Ezekiel asks, then sneaks a fry off Jake’s plate.

Cassandra laughs, and then quickly clamps down on it when they both turn to look at her, both looking more than a little affronted.

Her laugh turns into a snort, and she buries her head in her hands.

The others seem happy enough. They’re smiling, joking like they normally do.

And then they go silent, and she feels it.

Ezekiel hands her a handkerchief, and she presses it against her face.

“Are you okay?” Ezekiel asks kindly, more kindly than she’s ever heard him talk to anyone.

She opens her eyes to meet his, and smiles at him. “You know me. Always waiting to die.”

It’s supposed to be a joke, and they’ve made them before, but this just shuts them both down.

It’s like they’re stone, and she doesn’t know what she’s done wrong.

~~

They’re on the Great Wall of China, and that’s pretty amazing. 

There’s some secret message or passage or something in the wall itself, she’s not quite sure what.

She’s sure they’ll know it when they see it. Jake had deciphered some painting that was really a message, or maybe a map, and so here they are.

Jake’s walking alongside her, and Ezekiel’s a little way ahead, doing what he does best.

“Are you okay?” Jake asks, and she nods.

“Of course,” she says, without hesitation. She doesn’t even think about it.

She doesn’t have to.

“You’ve been a little weird lately. I was worried that maybe you were getting worse, and weren’t telling us.”

Her heart aches in her chest. “I’m fine,” she says, reaching out and grabbing his hand on a whim.

She should drop it, but she doesn’t, because that’ll be even more awkward.

She’ll just hold it for a second, then drop it, like she just wanted to initialize a moment of physical contact.

Not a big deal.

Her face gets warm, like she’s blushing, and she lets go of his hand after counting to three.

He takes her hand back in his, turning it around and looking at it.

“I worry,” Jake says. He looks over at Ezekiel. “We all do.”

“I know,” she says, “But you don’t have to. It doesn’t matter. Nothing’s going to change.”

Except one day, of course, she’s going to be dead.

~~

Ezekiel sees her holding Jake’s hand, and she’s surprised by the look on his face.

She thinks she may have made a mistake somewhere along the line, because he’d looked almost . . . jealous. Maybe that’s not quite the right word. Sad, maybe.

There’s no reason for that, because there’s nothing going on between any of them.

She constantly reminds herself of this, because there isn’t much choice.

They find the secret passageway, which takes them much further away from where they’d thought they’d be going, and they run into some kids using some mystical artifact for selfish reasons.

They acquire the artifact, and then lazily make their way back home.

She wonders if this is the height of her life experiences.

(She thinks, maybe, that if it is, then that might not be so bad.)

~~

They’re trapped underground, and hopefully Jake and Eve will find a way to dig them out.

Cassandra’s hopes are pretty high, but mother nature herself had deigned to provide them with a massive earthquake, which had caved the roof in, cutting off their escape route.

Jake’s got the book they came for, and he’s on the other side, so at least there’s that.

Ezekiel tries digging through the rubble for a minute or two until he stops and sighs, and then just plops on the floor, leaning back against a wall.

“Are you okay?” Cassandra asks, leaning down next to him, and then sitting when she sees his hands. “Ouch,” she says, hissing slightly. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” Ezekiel says, and it’s not mean, but it’s firm.

He’s brooking no arguments here.

Well, that’s too bad.

She takes his injured hand in her own and holds onto it, even when he fights her on it.

It’s more a battle of wills than of physical strength, and she pulls out the win.

She doesn’t smile triumphantly, but she’s pleased.

Ezekiel’s quiet, and his face is unreadable.

“They’ll get us out,” Cassandra assures him, because they’ve gotten out of much tougher situations than this before.

“I know,” Ezekiel says, but he sounds oddly sad about it. “They always do.”

Cassandra’s not sure what else to say, and so she holds Ezekiel’s hand, being careful not to touch his scrapes.

“We’re not going to die today,” Cassandra says, “That’s a nice feeling, right?”

Ezekiel looks at her then, and he looks pained. “Do you think about it?”

“What?” Cassandra asks. She knows exactly what he means.

“Dying,” Ezekiel says. “The fact that it could happen at any moment.”

Cassandra hesitates, and considers her answer. “All the time,” she answers finally.

“I don’t want you to die,” Ezekiel says, almost uncomfortably, and she knows it took a lot for him to say that like that, so raw and vulnerable. 

“Me neither,” Cassandra says softly, stroking the sides of Ezekiel’s hand with her own.

He hesitates, but then he lifts his uninjured hand to the side of her face, gently letting his knuckles brush against her face before moving to tuck stray hair behind her ear. “I—“ he starts to say, then stops.

“You what?” Cassandra presses, even though she’s got a feeling in her stomach that she shouldn’t.

Ezekiel looks so serious, so somber. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, stunning her.

Her mouth drops open, and she thinks she means to eventually say yes, but instead she presses forward, kissing him before he even has the chance to repeat the question.

It surprises him, but it surprises her too.

~~

After the kiss, they sit there, and she’s not sure what she’s supposed to say.

It felt—it felt nice, and beautiful, and full of possibility.

She thinks that might have scared her.

She thinks that that hope, that moment of genuine belief that things might not be all bad, may be one of the most terrifying and exhilarating things she’s ever felt before.

If she’s going to die, she thinks, maybe she should live a little first.

This goes contrary to almost every bone in her body, but she turns back to Ezekiel, and kisses him again. 

Soft lips against chapped lips, her hands grasping at his hair.

It feels good.

She pulls away again, and this time sighs, looking down at her hands.

She should tell him the truth.

But maybe that would just make things hurt more.

And that doesn’t feel worth it at all, even if this does.

~~

They don’t really talk about it, though there’s this softness in Ezekiel’s face when he looks at her, and things are different between them now.

She thinks that if she had the time, she might fall in love with him.

That’s surprising for her, because she’d never imagined she could possibly want so much from someone like Ezekiel, who is always his worst self, always snarky and funny and shockingly sweet—she quickly derails off the negative into the positive whenever she tries to think about it rationally.

They don’t do much more than kiss from time to time, and it’s nice.

She thinks the others might know, and that worries her.

She worries most about Jake, who keeps looking at her when he thinks she’s not paying attention.

She is though, and it makes her heart clench inside her chest, and she _hates_ that this is the state of affairs, but what’s she supposed to do?

She’s not a genius for nothing, and she figures it out.

She kisses Jake over lunch at a cute café somewhere half across the world, and she thinks she’s finally made sense of things.

She can have them now, and make sure that after she’s gone, they’ll have each other.

Everyone wins.

Jake is surprised at first by her overture, but then she does the best she can to explain what it means to care for two people, and she only sees relief on his face.

~~

She’s not caught between two guys.

It would be really easy for her to be the glue that holds them all together, but it’s not that simple.

They’re all tentative at first, but there’s been a rightness in their friendship for a long time, and it’s beginning to settle into this new stage of it.

Cassandra has a lot of experience with observing people, and she can tell that there’s something between Ezekiel and Jake too.

That makes her plan easier.

Everything is going to work out just fine.

She has to believe it, and honestly? She does.

~~

Ezekiel and Jake like to bicker.

Cassandra’s certainly not above it either, and she’s become increasingly fond of punctuating arguments with kisses and soft touches.

There’s fondness underneath the arguing, and it’s just the way that they all do things.

It’s part of the DNA of their relationship, whatever that might be.

Cassandra tells Ezekiel that he’s wrong, then laughs when he steals a kiss and then turns to Jake, the current deciding vote on what their plan for the mission should be.

“If you’re trying to butter me up, you’re going to have to try a lot harder,” Jake says to Ezekiel, but he’s smiling as he says it.

They eventually find a compromise, just like they always do.

They’re a team, she thinks.

A family, even, she determines.

(The thought makes her smile at the same time that she has the overwhelming urge to cry.)

~~

They slip inside each other’s lives like that’s where they were always meant to be.

It’s not that surprising.

They’re soulmates, obviously. There’s a certain amount of rightness that has to come out of that.

Cassandra thinks a lot about destiny.

She thinks a lot about all of the choices and decisions—hers and others—that led her to where she is.

Then, she adds in accidents, miracles, and the terrible truths of the universe.

Cassandra likes to make sense of things. It calms her, keeps her centered.

There are times that making sense of things is all she has.

~~

Ezekiel and Jake are taking bets on which one of the three of them is going to say I love you first, which has to be the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.

It seems counter-intuitive for that to be part of the fabric of a relationship, but they are who they are, and she wouldn’t change them if she could.

Her own money’s on herself, though she doesn’t say it out loud.

She's falling hard, fast enough that if she'd fallen off a building she'd probably die on impact.

She wonders why love always feels like a life and death proposition.

~~

Ezekiel likes to trace messages with his fingers across their skin.

Cassandra can only put up with it for a few minutes, because she starts to get ticklish, but it has almost become a bit of a competition between him and Jake.

Cassandra laughs when Jake finally reaches his limit and quickly moves out of Ezekiel’s reach.

Ezekiel is triumphant, “Again, he says, I win.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Jake says, looking disgruntled, but he still leans back in to kiss Ezekiel’s cheek before rolling back over.

Cassandra is contemplating how nice it is to be with them, how relaxing it feels to be this happy, and then it happens.

The miracle of human happiness is shattered.

“I love you—both of you,” Ezekiel says, stunning Cassandra.

“I do too,” Jake says softly, without hesitation. “I love you,” he says, and his voice is heavy with emotion, unlike anything she’s ever heard from him.

For a brief moment, she’s filled with joy.

She is loved.

She loves them.

She’s going to die.

Cassandra lies there quietly, and the silence between them feels loud and stifling, like the pressure of the moment is just going to keep intensifying until they explode from it.

She forces herself to breathe, in and out, deeply.

She counts her breaths, trying to find some sort of clarity, or at least a sense of calm.

~~

She’s not proud of it, but it’s the right decision: she stops spending as much time with Ezekiel and Jake. She pulls away from them emotionally, creating distance even when they’re all standing right next to each other.

It’s smarter, and it’s better this way.

It’ll hurt less now, she decides.

~~

They don’t take it lying down.

They try to give her space at first, and she appreciates that. She hopes that it’ll stay that way, because it makes it easier to deal with the way she feels.

She feels like her heart was torn from her chest, and the worst part is that she’s done it to herself.

It’s the right decision, but it goes against every instinct in her body.

After a week, Jake and Ezekiel try a different approach.

“What’s wrong?” Jake asks, as they both sit down next to her at her table.

“Nothing,” she chirps. Absolutely nothing at all.

“You’ve been acting strange,” Ezekiel says, then frowns. “And if it’s because of something I said,” he pauses, then sighs, like it’s difficult for him to get the words out. “Then I apologize.”

This is actually a pretty big deal, because Ezekiel rarely apologizes for anything, even when he’s entirely in the wrong.

In this case, he’s not.

“Me too,” Jake says, and from the look he gives Ezekiel before they both turn to look at her, she knows what they’re apologizing for.

It makes her feel slimy and wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra says, looking down at her hands on the table. “I just can’t give you what you want.”

“You’re not a very good liar,” Ezekiel muses. “Maybe try that again.”

Cassandra looks up sharply, meeting Ezekiel’s gaze. “We had a nice time,” she says, “And you’re my friends. I’m not interested in anything more.”

“We said we loved you,” Jake says, “We weren’t expecting you to say it back. It’s okay if you’re not there yet, or if you need more time. It’s okay.” He reaches out and places a hand over hers, and looks deeply into her eyes, as if trying to show her his sincerity.

She believes him, and that makes it harder.

“I can’t,” Cassandra says, pulling her hands out from underneath his and grabbing her things, sliding them quickly into her bag. “I have to go,” she says, and she turns and leaves.

She feels like a coward, but she’s not sure why.

This should be the bravest thing she's ever done. It isn't exactly easy to turn away from the people you love.

Maybe she’s just too afraid these days.

Maybe it’s starting to get to her.

~~

They back off again, though she notices that they don’t stop being with each other.

That’s good, she knows.

That’s exactly what she’d wanted.

It doesn’t exactly feel that way now, but it’s natural to feel regret when relationships end.

She watches them carefully, teasing and messing around.

She watches Jake be incredibly tactile, and Ezekiel’s eyes go soft and light up.

This is the way that things are supposed to be.

~~

Her headaches are getting worse, as are her nosebleeds.

She thinks she might be dying soon.

Any day now, in fact.

She thinks Flynn can sense it, because he’s always asking her questions and wandering off to obsess about things, like he’s trying to figure something out.

He’s very kind, just like they all are.

She’s grateful to have met them.

She’s luckier than most, and she can’t be selfish, and wish for more.

This is simply the lot she’s drawn in life, and she’s done everything she can. There’s nothing more that science or hope or magic can do for her.

She’s sitting at a table, reading through a really interesting ancient text when Ezekiel and Jake appear with Flynn, flanking him from either side.

Flynn slams down a book.

“I’ve found your solution,” he says, smiling broadly. “We’re going to save you.” He always sounds like he believes everything he says, and it makes her want to believe too.

She can't.

Jake and Ezekiel are just looking at her, without judgment, even though it’s clear from the looks on their faces that they’ve figured her out.

It’s like they can see right into her soul, and she thinks she should have seen that coming.

They’re soulmates, after all.

“Really?” Cassandra asks cautiously. She doesn’t want to get her hopes up. She’s done that before. She’s believed in her own survival so strongly that she’d once aided evil.

She knows who she is, and she knows that that’s not who she wants to be.

“Yes,” Flynn says, “I promise.”

She lets herself believe.

~~

Cassandra Cillian believes in love.

She believes in magic, and science, and fairytales.

Jake and Ezekiel forgive her, telling her she doesn’t need to be forgiven at all.

They act like it was just a misunderstanding, when she’s sure they know how deliberate her plan truly was.

She’s going to live.

She might die tomorrow, still, because life is unpredictable, but there isn’t a tumor the size of a grape threatening her at every turn.

For the first time in a while, she actually has options. She can choose to live the life she wants to live—and the truth is that she wants to live the one she has.

She wants to keep doing the work they’re doing, and she wants to be with her friends, and the men that she loves.

“You’re my soulmates,” Cassandra says softly one night, soon after everything changes.

“If you believe in that sort of thing, yeah,” Jake says, agreeing with her.

Ezekiel snorts. “I’m not really a soulmate sort of person,” he says. “But I’m fairly happy with this arrangement we’ve got.”

He pretends not to feel as deeply as he truly does, Cassandra knows, but his heart is so big.

Neither Jake nor Ezekiel seems to understand that she hadn’t been asking a question. She’d been telling them, sharing a truth because that’s what you do with the people you love.

She rolls her eyes and turns over so that she can get more comfortable.

Ezekiel, the true thief ready to steal pretty much everything, is unsurprisingly a huge blanket thief, and they’re in the midst of a tug of war.

“I love you,” she  murmurs softly, barely even still awake.

Ezekiel grunts and Jake reaches out a hand to pat her shoulder sleepily.

It makes her smile—and she has the overwhelming urge to cry, because there are a million more smiles and I love yours in her future now, hopefully.

In this moment, she thinks, she’s the happiest she’s ever been.


End file.
